Let's give the Florida town some kudos because it was taking its lumps a few months ago: Jonathan Baltuch of MRI, a consultant for the city on this Wi-Fi rollout, writes in a guest column at Muniwireless.com that in the first six months of operation (as of Sept. 6, 2006), they saw 8,421 registered users or 77% of city households. The city has grown from an estimated 10,000 to 11,000 households during that period with annexations and developments, which tells you how fast towns grow these days. Update: I confirmed with Baltuch via email that the number of households is correct--the count of 8,421 represents at least one user in a household, not 8,421 individuals. They expect this could mean about double that number of individuals using the network, or at least in a home in which the network is being used, based on about two users per household in their survey.
They've logged 1.8m hours and seen over 500K sessions, transferring 10 terabytes of data, with an average session time of 3.55 hours. He's putting the money saved by residents at $3.7m per year based on an average fee previously paid of about $36 per month. (If you were paying $26.95 for AOL for dial-up, that's now dropped to $9.99, but I figure there's a lot of variation among dial-up and broadband monthly fees.)
These are pretty cool numbers because they support both Baltuch's case--the idea that free Wi-Fi paid for by a city could produce economic effects and high uptake--and the opposite. The opposite case being that there's such a pent-up demand for this that a combination of advertising-supported free service and paid monthly service at a rate below an average of $36 per month could have good uptake, too. Baltuch is absolutely correct that with predictions by EarthLink et al. of a 15-20% take rate of subscriptions in cities that will have Wi-Fi networks installed, seeing a six-month 77% take rate is fairly remarkable.
It may cause some rethink. The former mayor, Glenn Sangiovanni, talked months ago about how pretty much every dollar spend on Internet access in his city was leaving the city economy, and that by spending well under $3m, the city would be serving several different missions, including retaining dollars that would ostensibly be kept in town.
i find it very hard to believe that there are even Wi-Fi devices in 77% of households.
i'm very skeptical of the loose meaning of "users" and "households". it not clear if by "registered users" they mean individuals or households... that would really change the analysis. for instance, if we were to assume that there are 3 people average per household, and they all become registered users, it would only take 25% household penetration to generate the 7500+ users they claim.
[Editor's note: It's a small community and the program includes a lot of community session and training, as well as selling bridges to residents without Wi-Fi or who can't get a strong signal. Baltuch seems to distinguish clearly between households signed up (which could be one person per household), never noting as far as I can tell that he's trying to conflat people and households.--gf]
I asked a similar question at muniwireless.com and Baltruch gave a vague answer that implied that they don't really know how many unique households they have registered. There are 8,400 registered users, but it isn't clear how many are visitors from out of town, or multiple users in the same household.
The financial data he shows is clearly flawed. He just took the number of registered users and assumed that they were all unique households and that they all cancelled their existing internet access. He then multiplied that by 7 and said that there is a $25m economic stimulus to the local economy.
I'm not saying that St Cloud WiFi isn't a good deal for the city, but before you publish articles saying how great it is you should do a more accurate analysis. The city could have spent $3m on a lot of other projects, or refunded $300 to each household. :)
[Editor's Note: I've exchanged email with Baltuch and posted some additional information in the main article.--gf]
i'm still skeptical. the only place i've ever seen 75-80% household broadband penetration is in Korean high rises where it's basically mandated by law that all new housing be pre-wired. but even in those places, where bband is in the $20-25/month range, you still have 10-20% of households that just could care less about broadband (seniors, technophobes, luddites, frequent travellers, etc)
the numbers just dont add up. am i also to believe that St Cloud is significantly above US penetration rates of PCs? and am i to believe that every house that has a PC has wifi? and that they all signed up for this service?